Elissa Washuta
Faculty Oversight Committee Member of the Newark Earthworks Center
Email
466 Denney Hall
164 Annie and John Glenn Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210
Areas of Expertise
- Creative writing (nonfiction)
Education
- MFA, Creative Writing (Fiction), University of Washington, 2009
- BA, English, University of Maryland, 2007
Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. Her essay collection White Magic was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Open Book Award, longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award, and named among the best books of 2021 by TIME, the New York Public Library, and NPR. She is the author of Starvation Mode and My Body is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. With Theresa Warburton, she is the co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. Elissa’s honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Creative Capital award and the Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award.
- Indigenous Ohio: Ohio State and Native Arts and Humanities Past and Present Grant
Selected Publications
- White Magic. Tin House Books, 2021.
- Starvation Mode: A Memoir of Food, Consumption, and Control. Instant Future-Future Tense Books, 2015. EBook.
- My Body Is a Book of Rules. Red Hen Press, 2014.
- Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. University of Washington Press, 2019.
Awards
- 2022 PEN Open Book Award finalist.
- "Ohio State professor shortlisted for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award." Franny Lazarus, Ohio State News. March 2, 2022.